Because you don't know the consequences of your changes. Look at Year of Hell and Annorax's fiddling with time.
TNG changed the Timeline.
- Thread starter HotRod
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I wouldn't call that 'changing the timeline', but rather simply 'retconning'. Every series after TOS did that, to some extent (sometimes even within TOS).
(Well, to be fair, every series probably changed the timeline , too, at some point(s)).
That’s a good point as well. Did Sela exist before the events of YE? We know that Tasha Prime did not know of a half-Romulan kid who shares her DNA for some inexplicable reason, nor did Sela show up until after
I always assumed she did.
The way I read it is, the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise" were always supposed to happen, and the Enterprise-C had to make that trip to the alternate future. Otherwise the Romulans would have destroyed them AND the Klingon outpost (the C was obviously not fit for battle when the D found it).
So even before that episode takes place, alternate Tasha was always supposed to go back and join the C's crew. Therefore, Sela always existed.
And the reason we never saw Sela before? Because plot.
I always assumed she did.
The way I read it is, the events of "Yesterday's Enterprise" were always supposed to happen, and the Enterprise-C had to make that trip to the alternate future. Otherwise the Romulans would have destroyed them AND the Klingon outpost (the C was obviously not fit for battle when the D found it).
So even before that episode takes place, alternate Tasha was always supposed to go back and join the C's crew. Therefore, Sela always existed.
And the reason we never saw Sela before? Because plot.
And that’s a perfectly fine take. And I pretty much agree with you, since apparently the Ent-C’s sacrifice was the catalyst for the Klingons making ultimate peace with the Federation, which happened even before the events of YE.
But the question is, is there an ‘original’ timeline where the Ent-C sacrificed itself to save the Klingon outpost without being thrown forward in time to meet the ‘war timeline’ Ent-D, and therefore Sela didn’t exist prior to the events of YE? And was that original timeline what we saw for the first 2 1/2 seasons of TNG?
Not the way I read it, no.
Look at the condition the Enterprise-C was in, when the D's crew discovered it. All of the C's major systems were disabled, most of the senior staff were dead or unconscious, and (I'm guessing) shields were down. It was in NO condition to face any more major combat. If the C hadn't spent any time in the future, where it could be repaired and its crew could be revived, the Romulans would have destroyed it in short order. The C would never have accomplished its mission to save Narendra III had it not travelled into the future.
So the timeline that is restored at the end of the episode is, IMHO, exactly the same one that existed before. It's a paradox.
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But all the Klingons needed to know was that a Federation ship responded to their distress call and defended the colony before it was destroyed. The Ent-C was fine before it engaged the Romulan ships. So the only difference was that rather than being completely destroyed, it held out long enough for the Romulans to take prisoners, including War Tasha. The outcome would be the same: the Klingons viewed the Ent-C’s sacrifice as honorable.
Picard's lines (in the war timeline) about "The Narendra III outpost was destroyed" and "A Federation starship rescuing a Klingon outpost...might have averted 20 years of war" would seem to suggest that in the regular timeline, Narendra III was saved from destruction due to the sacrifice of the Enterprise-C.
And given the sorry state the C was in, when the D found it, would also give credence to the theory that the "war timeline" was necessary for the survival of the regular one. If the D's crew hadn't spent all that time restoring the C's systems (and crew), the C wouldn't have had a chance. The Romulans would have blasted it out of the sky before it could have done anything at all.
And given the sorry state the C was in, when the D found it, would also give credence to the theory that the "war timeline" was necessary for the survival of the regular one. If the D's crew hadn't spent all that time restoring the C's systems (and crew), the C wouldn't have had a chance. The Romulans would have blasted it out of the sky before it could have done anything at all.
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My interpretation is that before the events of 'Yesterday's Enterprise' there was no way Sela could exist, why would she?
Only after Tasha went to the past, then it became possible.
That's my interpretation too but it would mean the timeline was altered, at least in some way.
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Well, the only reason Narendra was completely destroyed (and therefore no eyewitnesses lived to tell that a Federation ship defended them) was because the C was yanked out of its time. But if the timeline had been allowed to continue normally, it's still possible that Narendra could still have been defended by the C (just not in the upgraded capacity it was thanks to help from the war timeline Ent-D), and survivors could still have reported that the C tried to defend them. But we'll never know the exact circumstances, if that happened at all.
Not necessarily. Data's head was still underneath San Francisco even before they went back in time and left it there. So why couldn't Sela exist before the circumstances leading to her existence happened?
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It could easily be the case that in the original timeline the Enterprise-C was simply repaired by the crew of the D in the war timeline, without Tasha going back with the C.
Guinan's talk with Tasha may have been the cause of the change.
Good point.
I guess this is where the alternate timeline thing comes up but even with a minor change the timeline will change.
Maybe the question is, how much has to change for the timeline to become altered.
Change is change so even the tiniest thing could change the timeline therefore making it altered.
But what is original anyway?
Is there some way for the timeline to be unaltered forever?
It's a bit important to note that Spock refers to the Eugenics Wars as 'your so-called last world war', which may be what historians at the time, called it. That it ended up not being so doesn't completely contradict the 'hot take' at the time, possibly.
Mind you, SNW has tried to paint them all as the same, or at least, heavily interlinked, conflicts (with the Eugenics wars likely in the late 2020s, the USA civil war ten or twenty years on maybe, and WW3 reaching boiling point in the early 2050s?)
If the Eugenics Wars were a World War they would have to be number III, last so-called or otherwise. Not sure why historians would change the nomanclature when another war came along.
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